


That One Old Tree

by Silex



Category: Original Work
Genre: Childhood Stories, Flash Fic, Gen, Horror, Trees, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 00:08:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21127541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: The children always tell stories about that one old tree. They've always told the stories so they must be true, right?





	That One Old Tree

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kisuru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kisuru/gifts).

There are stories, all town have them. Thick as weeds in the fall fields, overgrown and wild, waiting for winter.

Thick as leaves on the ground beneath that old cherry tree in the abandoned field.

They say nothing else grows near it, that its shadow kills anything that tries to grow there.

There are a lot of things they say about that tree.

Like why, when children will sneak into the abandoned orchards in the fall, taking, not stealing, fruit from heavy, twisted branches, they won’t go near the cherry tree in the spring.

When it blooms the petals are the wrong shape, the wrong color. Those leaves, a sickly yellow even in the height of summer. They say it’s dying, but it always blooms again in the spring.

Always with its too dark flowers, white with streaks of red, not pink. Streaks that drip in the rain.

Birds don’t eat the fruit.

Or maybe they do and then die, their bodies falling from the like dead leaves.

There are bones under the tree.

Not just bird bones either.

Mice and squirrels, rabbits even.

Deer too if they eat the fruit.

Other bones as well, deep and mingled with the roots.

The woman who lived in the house over a hundred years ago had seven children and the youngest went missing. One by one they went missing until there was only one left and then the woman was gone.

The oldest son was still there until he hung himself from the old cherry tree.

His was the only body found, taken and buried beneath a blank stone in the little cemetery at the bottom of the hill.

Children dare each other to touch the stone on dark fall nights.

The tree though, they won’t touch.

Someone must have though, or at least gotten close enough in summer to see the fruit because everyone knows that they split and drip red, staining the ground beneath, streaking the trunk.

Flies swarm to the fruit, drinking their fill.

Rotten fruit lays thick on the ground, white pits gleaming through.

Someone must have gone to the tree once because everyone knows that inside the cherries that rot on the ground, untouched by anything, there aren’t pits. Teeth and little finger bones grow within the fruit.

The tree knows and so do the children or else there wouldn’t be stories.

And there are always stories.


End file.
